Download As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval by Eitan P. Fishbane PDF

As gentle prior to sunrise explores the paranormal considered Isaac ben Samuel of Akko, an important medieval kabbalist whose paintings has in the past bought really little realization. via attention of an in depth literary corpus, together with a lot that also continues to be in manuscript, this learn examines an array of subject matters and questions that experience nice applicability to the comparative research of mysticism and the wider learn of faith. those comprise prayer and the character of mystical event; meditative focus directed to God; and the facility of psychological goal, authority, creativity, and the transmission of knowledge.

Reliable and evil, fresh and unclean, wealthy and terrible, self and different. the character and serve as of such binary oppositions have lengthy intrigued students in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the hole chapters of Genesis, during which God separates day from evening, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the data of excellent and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate through the Hebrew Bible.

The reception of early Jewish/Israelite texts in early Christianity presents priceless insights into the hermeneutics of historical authors and stories during this regard are very important for an figuring out in their theology/ies. by way of focusing quite at the reception of the Psalms during the hand of the unknown writer of Hebrews, previous testomony and New testomony students mix forces during this assortment to figure out the shifts in interpretation of the Psalms that happened in the course of the strategies of (re)interpretation in the paintings of a specific early Christian author.

This publication maintains a chain of volumes containing the papers learn at an annual convention held in flip by means of Tel Aviv and Bochum during a co-operation among the Lester and Sally Entin college of Humanities, Chaim Rosenberg college of Jewish experiences, the dept of Bible of Tel Aviv collage and the college of Protestant Theology within the college of the Ruhr, Bochum, considering 1985.

This article examines the best way the tale of the flood in Genesis 6-9 offers the moral query of the worth of human lifestyles. The resources J and P are tested to determine how their mix within the canonical textual content complements interpretation. a number of subject matters of the tale are studied, together with the motives of the flood, the righteousness of Noah, God's repentance, construction and uncreation, the covenant and clone of God.

Ron, for whom Isaac has a particular affinity), ’Emet (’A) correlates to the lower levels of sefirotic Being, and ’Emet Nekhonah (N) to the higher rungs of the sefirot. The primary conclusion that Huss draws from this complex exegetical model is that like the interpretive system of Abraham Abulafia, the levels of interpretation correspond directly to hierarchized levels of human experience as it ascends through the dimensions of divine reality. Huss further argues (and this point is especially relevant for our purposes) that climactic hermeneutical experience is correlated by Isaac to the moment of prophecy, an assertion that finds an immediate parallel in the writings and methods of Abulafia.

286; Graboïs, “Akko as a Gate for Immigration to the Land of Israel in the Crusader Period,” pp. 102–103. 39. See Fenton, The Treatise of the Pool by ‘Obadyah Maimonides. 29 30 Context bestowed upon him by others. In Isaac of Akko’s ’Oz. ar H . ayyim, this mentality was also associated with a social group known as the ­perushim ha-mitbodedim, which might be loosely translated as “the ascetics who meditate in seclusion” (for more on this, see Chapter 8). As Ephraim Kanarfogel has demonstrated recently,40 the extensive use of the term perushim, as well as the content of this form of asceticism and extreme humility, was a dominant feature of Ashkenazi pietism as it was expressed and practiced among tosafist scholars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.